Jerusalem | Israeli MPs voted on Monday (Tuesday AEST) to limit the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down government actions, delivering a long-sought goal of the country’s ascendant right-wing movement.
The measure was pushed through despite months of civil unrest, international condemnations and pleas from business and security leaders to seek consensus in a deeply divided society on the verge of chaos.
Legislators methodically voted down 140 amendments from the opposition, just as they had shouldered through more than 1000 objections in a week of preliminary manoeuvring and more than six months of nationwide protests.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just hours after leaving the hospital where he had an emergency pacemaker implanted, sat calmly through the voting as shouts of derision rained around him, occasionally leaving for consultations. He took several phone calls, including from Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who was trying to broker a last-minute compromise.
But in a dramatic parliamentary session, with shouts of “shame!” chanted by demonstrators outside the Knesset and by opposition members inside, the prime minister’s coalition of right-wing, religiously conservative and ultranationalist parties stood steadfast.
After opposition members had left the chamber in protest, government loyalists voted to change Israel’s Basic Law, stripping the Supreme Court of some of its powers of judicial review. It was a first victory in a more expansive plan to rein in the judiciary, which has long been a thorn in the side of Israel’s right wing.
Read the article by Steve Hendrix and Shira Rubin in the Financial Review.